This invention relates to the field of guest registration systems for places of lodging, such as hotels, motels, boarding houses, rooming houses, bed-and-breakfasts, and the like. More specifically, it relates to an improved registration system which handles most check-in and departure situations without the need for a desk clerk.
In the lodging industry, and especially in the hotel and motel portions thereof, it has become commonplace to maintain computer records of guests and room availability. These records are constantly available to track the time that a guest stays at the place of lodging, the billing information for the guest, the room assignments and vacancies for the place of lodging, and other information. Such information is now usually entered manually by hotel employees. Most places of lodging utilize a front desk manned by an employee and at which registration information is obtained, a mode of payment is arranged and room keys are dispensed and collected. All these somewhat routine but personal tasks require most hotels and motels to staff their front desks 24 hours a day.
For some large hotel and motel chains, sufficient personnel time is available to staff the front desk at all times, to process arriving and departing guests, and to give out and collect room keys. However, small hotels and motels, including even the smaller or regional chains, and particularly individual or family owned units, often do not have the personnel or the resources to staff a front desk at all times. In many situations, the only staff at the smaller establishments is the proprietor or the immediate family of the proprietor, because limited operating budgets may be more wisely spent in activities other than staffing a front desk during inactive shifts. This smaller personnel base often means that guests arriving at off hours must ring a bell or buzzer for assistance, waking the manager or proprietor. Even large hotels, although able to staff the front desk at all times, may also have better ways of using operating dollars as opposed to constant staffing of the desk.
A major reason for needing a manned front desk has been the need to dispense and collect room keys. In recent years, the room key has evolved from the easily misplaced or duplicated metal key, to plastic hole-encoded punch cards, and then to plastic magnetically encoded room key cards proprietary to the hotel or motel and dispensed from the front desk. The latter key cards are useable only at the place of lodging and operate by the use of a magnetic card reader at the door of a guest room to actuate the guest room door lock after the card has been recognized and approved.
Hotel room key security is an ongoing problem when conventional keys and key cards are used. While a guest has some concerns about loss of his room key, it is seldom given the same level of concern as would be assigned to the guest's personal keys, wallet or the like. The guest's level of concern also varies with his perceived risk as, for example, a guest being fairly unconcerned with key security before he has physically placed his property in the guest room or after he has removed the property. Guests may even voluntarily allow others to use their hotel key, resulting in a still lower standard of security. The guest seldom realizes that each time the key is lost or available to unauthorized persons, that room security is jeopardized in some way, such as the room's equipment being vulnerable to damage, theft or other intrusion. Because of these attitudes hotel guest room key problems are substantially greater and more numerous than those encountered for a private residence. The present invention provides a workable solution to these difficulties.
With these shortcomings in mind there remains a need for a guest registration system which can successfully receive and also discharge the guest and address the problem of delivery and collection of a room key when employees are not available to assist the guest.